Bug 240497 - Website contact form rejecting due to spam content, yet no links or similar in message.
Summary: Website contact form rejecting due to spam content, yet no links or similar i...
Status: Closed FIXED
Alias: None
Product: Services
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Forums (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: Any Any
: --- Affects Only Me
Assignee: Forum Adminstrators
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2019-09-11 10:02 UTC by David Harrison
Modified: 2019-09-12 13:55 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:


Attachments
Image of error (150.09 KB, image/png)
2019-09-11 10:02 UTC, David Harrison
no flags Details

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Description David Harrison 2019-09-11 10:02:29 UTC
Created attachment 207375 [details]
Image of error

I just tried to use the web contact form to mention the issue in bug 240496.

The form rejected my message due to spam content. I'm at a loss to see anything spammy in there.

Please see attached.
Comment 1 freebsd 2019-09-12 13:36:55 UTC
The form input action was flagged by an external spam detection system (plugged into the forums) called Akismet (which is a system that keeps track of millions of posts, comments, and user data on a wide array of forums and WordPress installations). 

Unfortunately, the actual trigger is not visible to users of the service, and the contact form is not part of our moderation queue, so we do not get the change to view the contact form input and actually approve or deny it (in technical terms: it is not exposed for moderation). 

See https://xenforo.com/community/threads/spam-trigger-log-moderated-post.90908/.

This was, clearly, a false positive.
Comment 2 David Harrison 2019-09-12 13:42:33 UTC
(In reply to freebsd from comment #1)
Thanks for the explanation. If Akismet is beyond moderator control would it be better to close this one?
Comment 3 freebsd 2019-09-12 13:54:48 UTC
Yes, there is really nothing we can do (and the forum software makers know about the issue and may mitigate it in a future release); Akismet may have the occasional side-effect, but by and large it is a very valuable tool to keep spam down. Thanks for reporting.